Nachthelle

ACHT BRÜCKEN opens its 15th edition Music for Cologne with a four-part festive evening dedicated to outstanding actors of new music from Cologne. 

Reinforced by top-class guests, also from the independent Cologne scene, the percussionist Rie Watanabe and her ensemble DEHIO have developed a program around the contrasts of light and darkness. In Kaija Saariaho's idiosyncratic »Ciel étoilé« deep double bass sounds may represent the night sky; Cymbals and crotales sprinkle it with their accents like twinkling stars. Johannes Fritsch's piece »Nachthelle«, which shares its title with an ensemble song by Franz Schubert, seems related in terms of content. The string instruments involved tune their outer strings so low that their muffled, noisy sounds enter into an exciting interplay with the bright, open tones of the normally tuned middle strings.

The two night pieces are framed by two other poetically inspired works. In the case of Farzia Fallah's »at the same moment,« the performance instructions already seem like little poems: there is talk of the »proper time« of the sounder, of »silently beautiful« lying sounds and a »moment of the standing now.« Kaija Saariaho, on the other hand, borrowed her work title »Terrestre« from the poetry collection »Oiseaux« by Saint-John Perse. Like a bird, the solo flute seems to rise above everything earthly.

Funded by the Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes NRW